Hey!

Good to hear from you! I'm glad we finally got this to go down. What's happening?

(laughs) And he's accepted mine?

I don't think that's Jimmy Page.

(laughs)

I think it's "Jerome Pagano" or something. I don't know who that is.

(laughs)

Well, right now I'm at home. I just got home 2 days ago, and I've been taking it easy. Kristy (Dan's wife) got a couple days off at work so we've just been sleeping late and going, like, going to the cleaners. That's been the big chore for the day—go pick up some clothes, and then stop at Starbucks. And then come home and take a nap.

There is a nice farmer's market here on Sundays—I used to go there when I was home all the time.

Yeah, go to San Diego tomorrow and come home tomorrow night. And then we play a show in Annaheim the next day, which is like almost as far as San Diego is from here, with traffic.

And then we go out by you! Wait, no, I'm sorry—we have a show in Santa Cruz, and then we go up by you.

Is that what's there?

No, the record is still being finished. There's 10 songs that have been completed; that means everything's done and mixed. There's 5 more songs that need vocals, because we kind of went into the studio not really with anything written. I mean, there was a couple of demos, but there wasn't a whole lot set up; we'd have a groove for the verse and two different possible choruses for a song.

We basically wrote the songs there, and all the lyrics had to be written, too. We got all the basic tracks done in about 4 weeks; the overdubs started happening, and then Damian had to get the lyrics done. So a good portion of the lyrics were written in the last 2 weeks. As soon as he was finished writing his lyrics he would try to perform them, we'd record a take on them and then the song would be mixed.

It was a really weird, kind of crazy way to do the record. We didn't really know what the songs would be about until they were mixing them. So it was really surprising: ...oh my gosh! This song is about something I didn't even realize. Through the process we discovered this one is a love song and this song is going to be a really introspective song. All in all I think it was a really good way to work. It was really stressful, but I think this record more than any record has lyrics that have real meaning. He didn't have time to iron out or remove any of the human parts of it. It's just real. I'm super stoked about it.

Yeah. And for me hearing it for the first time with lyrics it was like hearing the song for the first time. I knew the music and I knew the form and how it felt musically, but after having the lyrics in there it was like "oh! this is what the song is about!" And for me, the songs are very genuine and very heartfelt, and it's good. I feel like this record is more genuine all around than the other stuff we've done.

(laughs) You know it's weird that you mention it, because Damian did sing through a vocoder on one of the songs, and it's English and you can understand what he's saying—it's almost legible. You can tell the words and if you listen carefully—listen twice—you can get the meaning but at first it just sounds like the Battlestar Gallactica guy. (laughs) You know, the guy with the light that goes back and forth?

Exactly. So, still, there's 5 songs that don't have lyrics so the pressure is still on. I'm sure he'd like to do a Theremin vocal part.

I don't really. I haven't really come to the table with any sort of "...yeah, I think it should be *this* rhyme or this theme". If there's a question of how the lyrics that are already set are supposed to feel or how they are rhythmically I'll have things to add. Like the song Get Over It years ago, I think the original line was something like "...get....get...get over it" and I said "what if we did 'get-get-get-get-get over it'?" But that's about as much as I contribute lyrically. I'm just always hoping that the lyrics are good. (laughs) Like "oh god I hope this means something to people".

(laughs)

(laughs) "Bette Midler" is a great fill. There's a lot of words that don't make a great fill—like "alligator" isn't that good, or "sizzler"... not good. But "Bette Midler" is awesome. It's hard to even think about that woman's name without thinking about a drum solo.

(laughs) Totally.

Totally.

Yeah, that's basically what it's going to be. We did about a week of touring that was un-advertised, un-promoted tours on the East coast, and we're now doing the same thing on the West coast.

Yeah, well it's really good to do. It's super stressful to do, but it's good. We left the studio with a brand new crew that didn't know each other and didn't know our gear, and we played these small rooms on the East coast and basically made a lot of mistakes and figured out how this thing is gonna work. And now we're going to do all the markets on the West coast. It gives promoters an idea of what kind of draw we have without any promotion.

As of last year when we finished promotion on our last record we were doing about 1000 people in any city, and so hopefully with the new album we'll be doing the same cities, and if we can do better, that's good.

Yeah, that was totally unrelated to anything that was happening with the band. The week before we went to the studio, we were getting ready for the session and Banana Republic was like "we want to use you guys for our ad campaign". We said "yeah, sure!" We thought it was going to be online and didn't really think it was going to be a big thing. And they were so happy with the photos that they used us on a lot of billboards. Did you see the one in San Francisco?

It's crazy! It was really a surprise. We knew we were going to be in magazines, but we didn't expect to be on billboards. There's one on Sunset in town here—I haven't seen it yet.

Yeah, it's crazy! And what's awesome about it is it's kind of helping us set up a record. I mean, when people see that I don't know what people think, but if you see this image and then you see that it's OK Go you kind of go "oh okay, there's that band, and they have kind of a cooled-out look now...something must be brewing". But really, we didn't go into the photo shoot with that in mind. And now that there's a record that's going to be finished.... Oh, and totally unrelated to the record we're in the last scene of the movie I Love You Man.

Yeah, do you remember?

So that's totally unrelated. And I haven't seen the movie yet, but I know there's a big segment in the last scene where the two main characters hug, and it's the climax, and we're playing a Rush song. Did I tell you about this?

(laughs) It's totally ridiculous. But we're playing "Limelight".

With the two main guys. Yeah, it's really bizarre. But listen, the extra thing that's crazy about it: the lead singer of our wedding band is Craig Wedren!

It's totally bizarre. That was just a trip. I mean, we were in this movie and we were hoping it was going to be something, and now it's getting this massive push. So that's good.

Yeah, I tried to air-play along with it. That's a hard song to play, period. (laughs) It's a really hard song to air-drum to. If it was "Tom Sawyer" I woulda been lick-for-lick.

But, you know, "Limelight" was really like, the third track...

(laughs) Yeah.

There's the drummers that I listened to very carefully at the beginning of the band that were really important to me. I wasn't necessarily a fan of the music—I liked the music, but I was really focusing on them and their chops and their studio ability, because when OK Go first started I don't think I was really ready to be a studio musician.

When we did our first record, these legendary session drummers were called in to do my job, and basically played the drums on our first record. Which was really an incredibly humbling—and initially sad and frustrating—experience. But I got into those guys and listened to more of the music they were doing.

The first-call session guys of the early 2000s, like Matt Chamberlain and Josh Freese—these are the session guys that get paid $X a day and they come in and knock out three tracks in a day. They'll get the song in two takes, and it'll have all the chops and all the feel you could ever want, but they don't do it live. They won't join your band to go on tour with you—they're just session guys. It was a brand new world for me. I knew about session guys like Steve Gadd and Dave Weckl—

—but they're so jazz-oriented and they were so virtuosic, that they could do things that no one could do. The session guys I met could do the things that everyone should be able to do but can't do on the first try. Like if you listen to something like Sheryl Crow, that type of drumming everyone thinks they can do it in their basement. But when you're in the studio it'll take you a whole day to get that feel. These session guys—playing simply, playing in the pocket—they'll get it on the first take and it's like "wow! that's studio playing". So for me, that was a big thing to pay attention to. For the last 3 or 4 years, I've been really focusing on that kind of playing—being able to knock out a good feeling groove and knocking it out in 3 takes.

It's exactly that, but it's beyond that. You have your paradiddles so figured out, and you have such a comfort with the click that the click just disappears, and your paradiddles just disappear. It just becomes...you just become a better player. And becoming a better player in that sense doesn't mean you become a better showman. You can watch those guys play in front of an audience and it's awesome, but it's awesome in a totally different way than it is to watch Lars (Ulrich) play. Watching Lars from Metallica play is not like watching those guys. Lars puts on a crazy show—he stands up between crash hits, he throws his sticks—it's a totally different thing. And I felt like I really got good at that, but when it came time to go into the studio I'd do two takes and they'd say "okay, now let's get serious." And I'd be like "that was serious!"

(laughs) That's what I got! So this record for me was a real victory because we didn't have to do very much editing. I feel very confident because there's a lot of songs that have some pushing and pulling and it's all done on purpose.

These days I think more like a session guy, mostly because I've practiced so hard at it, but also it takes less energy. It's a more efficient way of playing. I don't break cymbals, I don't break sticks, I don't have to change drum heads through the tour.

I haven't been like that in a long, long time because—before I even read that article, trying to get through the set without really getting out of breath was important to me. Like, how do you get through these parts that really take a lot of energy, pace yourself through the whole thing, so you know that in the very last song—which is the most energetic song in the set—you're not totally dying?

Sometimes you can't always manage your energy. We played a show in Tampa, and it was 95 degrees out and I almost fell off the drum riser it was so hot. There wasn't any way I could pace myself in a way that I wasn't going to overheat, and I basically did overheat. It was outdoors, in the sun.

There's a lot of pacing. For me, I always have to remind myself that the PA is there to make you loud. You get to a point where you hit the snare drum so hard that it's not going to get any louder than the way it's compressed and gated through the PA. So, just relax, you don't have to hit the snare that hard, it's going to be just as loud through the PA.

There are times when you put on more of a show—lift your arms a little higher maybe—but the truth is I could play with my arms really low the entire set and it would sound exactly the same through the speakers.

Right. There's that guy, and then there's the guy from 311. He's a drum corps guy, and all of his motion is completely efficient. I think it's awesome to watch him, but to a No Doubt fan they probably think "this guy is kind of boring." There isn't a whole lot of visual action out of him. I'm more into the efficiency, but in the same breath there's a gong we bring out in the show and a huge orchestral drum, so there's some stuff that's wacky to watch. But it's not Stanleys Joyful Noise where people are jumping on inflatable unicorns and stuff like that. (laughs)

(laughs) Right—exactly.

That's a tough one. I got really into a lot of electronic music—dance stuff in particular. I got heavily into Daft Punk. They came out with a live thing last year, and I went and saw them in Las Vegas and their production was just awesome. An amazing light show. They basically just remixed their songs into one continuous our and a half set. I also got really into the Eagles recently. I bought this biography about them, and it was about all the crazy shit that they went through, with all the money they were making and all the drugs and all the women. It was great to read about the old school music business world where people were making obscene amounts of money and selling incredible numbers of records—like 26 million records. And I went back and listened to all their albums and was very impressed. It's great. It's awesome.

I think there's no click on those. That's my guess.

With really great drummers you can't tell if they're on a click. They can push things and you'll never know they're on a click. If the beginning of the song is the exact tempo as the end of the song, and it never feels like it gets sluggish at all, that's probably a great drummer playing with a click, or a great drummer playing without a click and he has the ability to get through it.

I think drummers back then weren't editing to a click. With drum machines in the 80s it became more metronomic. Like, whoever played drums on those Hall & Oats records—Tony Thompson—was amazing. He's awesome. I got into Hall & Oats pretty heavily last year, and they're awesome. They'd set up a drum machine, and the drummer would play along to it, and they'd mix it in. So that was like playing to a click that had an inherent feel that the drummer puts on top of it.

I guess, I'm not totally sure if a drummer is playing to a click or not, but if it feels good it feels good.

Yeah, there are jazz singers out there that don't pitch correct—

—right, and they're singing really in tune, and their harmonies are perfect.